Improving the Visibility of Road Markings
The research has established that the minimum distance at which road markings should be visible to drivers must be equivalent to two seconds of travel time. Several factors decide the distance at which a road marking is visible. Most of them are related to the driver, for example, the driver`s vision, headlight strength, car cleanliness, or are unavoidable, for example, rain or glare from oncoming vehicles. However, the composition of the road marking can be designed to optimize its visibility in a variety of conditions. For instance, the bright color of road markings is maintained by using titanium dioxide pigment, and the accumulation of dirt on markings can be prevented by adding crystallized titanium dioxide. Such accumulation of dirt on markings is likely to reduce their visibility.
The majority of the light emitted by the headlights, which hit the surface of the road, is either reflected forwards or absorbed by the road surface itself with just a fraction of the light reflected back towards the driver's eyes. Retroreflection is referred to as the reflecting of light back in the direction of the light source. As the coefficient of retroreflected luminance increases, the contrast between the road surface and the road marking also increases. When the light from the headlights which a road marking reflects back to the driver is more, the visibility of the road marking will also be more, particularly in bad weather and at night.
Additives such as titanium dioxide and others do not create retroreflection to improve the luminescence of road markings. On the contrary, retroreflection is increased by the addition of glass beads, thereby enhancing the night-time visibility of road markings. After the headlight beam enters the glass bead, it hits the pigmented road marking and is reflected back towards the driver of the car. As a result, the road marking appears to light up and hence the visibility of the road marking is considerably increased. Road markings, which include high-performance glass beads, are five times brighter than road markings that do not.
The level of retroreflection attained by glass beads is decided by the quality of the glass and the size of the beads. The 30 meter geometry is used to determine the level of retroreflectivity. This is the amount of reflected luminescence at a driver height of 1.2 m, an illumination distance of 30 m, and a headlamp height of 0.65 m.7 It is recommended to have a minimum retroreflectivity of 120 mcd/m2/ lux on a dry surface.
2019 02/28